It was a fleeting pause in 30 seconds of chaos, a flash of defiance from the cannabis dispensary clerk with a glass pipe in his hand, prompted by a provocation from the masked men who had barged into his store and started dousing him, his wife and their chihuahua with bear spray: How is a bong going to defend you from this?

Joshua Lewis-Brant lowered his arms as if to consider the question, then noticed one of his assailants had bent down and grabbed the empty recycling bin by the front door. He shrugged his shoulders, the implication clear: How are you going to hurt me with that?

Lewis-Brant raised his left arm in a defensive stance as the attacker chucked the bin past his head, missing him from point-blank range.

“It just rolled off my back,” he said.

Lewis-Brant, 28, gained internet acclaim this week when a video was posted to YouTube of him successfully fending off four would-be robbers who stormed the Recreational Cannabis Farmers Market in Shannonville, Ont., last Thursday. He was idling behind the counter around 4 p.m. when the intruders — three men in masks, plus a getaway driver who later entered the fracas as it neared its conclusion — strode inside carrying bags and wielding the spray, which one of them fixed on Lewis-Brant and his wife, Audrea, the only other employee on duty.

The men “tried to spray the crap out of us,” Lewis-Brant told the National Post on Wednesday. “My wife ended up taking most of it. The way our store is, it all fell behind the counter, where we were. There was nowhere else to go.”

As the attackers shouted at him to “get the f–k down,” Lewis-Brant reached, on instinct, for the item on the counter closest to his grasp: a bong. Security footage shows him shuffling sideways around the counter and toward the men, brandishing the instrument at eye level. A cat-and-mouse game ensued: the men sprinted for the door, then tentatively reversed course, seemingly trying to gain access to the goods along the back wall while staying outside of the bong’s range.

“I wasn’t even thinking about the product or the money,” Lewis-Brant said. “I was thinking about my wife and, holy s–t, there’s four people here and what — are they going to take her?”

The clash came to a swift resolution when the intruders appeared to run out of spray and their last-ditch effort to daze Lewis-Brant with the blue bin missed the mark. The men left the store and bolted from the scene in a white SUV, the Tyendinaga Police Service wrote on Facebook last week. Const. Chris Brinklow said Wednesday that the force’s investigation is ongoing.

Lewis-Brant credits Audrea with alerting him to the men’s impending arrival a few seconds before they entered the store, which gave him a brief head start and a chance to orchestrate his defence. The two of them were treated on site for chemical burns from the spray, while a friend arrived to drive their chihuahua, Cheech — who was also behind the counter at the time of the attack — to an emergency veterinarian in nearby Belleville. The dog was washed down with saline solution and given eye drops.

Employees at the dispensary were forced to trash “a lot of product,” Lewis-Brant said, but the store didn’t close early that day. It’s a family-owned business, and, when they heard the news, many of the employees drove down to help clean. Lewis-Brant returned the following morning for his scheduled shift.

The attack “was traumatic, and obviously it sucked to happen, but it’s kind of to be expected in the business, in a way,” he said. “I’m just lucky they didn’t have any other weapons.”